Road to Heaven
‘But how did I get here?’ wondered Talking Heads in Once In A Lifetime, just one of the rock songs performed by Young At Heart Chorus during Road To Heaven. But it’s also a question the 28 octogenarian performers of this choir ask themselves and the audience during this performance.
Set in a nursing home, partly inspired by the elderly housing project in Massachusets where the Young At Heart chorus formed in 1982, Road To Heaven transforms these drab surrounding into a cabaret show crammed with outrageous costumes. Yet Road To Heaven is also a philosophical meditation on age, infusing songs such as Bob Dylan’s Forever Young and Phil Ochs’ Changes with a wry humour alongside surprisingly youthful vitality and spectacular visuals. However, as hilarious as Young At Heart often is Road To Heaven is far from being just a one-joke show of pensioners playing at being punks. Instead it is a poignant piece which ponders our own attitudes towards the great inevitable, as well as being living proof that you’re never too old to rock’n’roll.